OUR VIEW: Lovelady Center plan to buy former Carraway hospital and turn it into a multifaceted shelter and recovery center for women and children is a real gift for Birmingham

Carraway Methodist Medical Center is targeted to be the new Lovelady Center. (The Birmingham News file)

When Carraway hospital shut down its operations in 2008 after 100 years, many people, especially in Norwood and surrounding neighborhoods, hoped another hospital would move into the highly visible medical campus near Birmingham's convention center. But with too many hospital beds in the area, and Birmingham's Trinity Medical Center trying to leave the inner city for a more lucrative location on its outskirts, there was little chance another hospital would fill Carraway's site.

Other ideas considered included a state mental health hospital, an outpatient center for veterans and a re-entry ministry for prisoners and recovering drug addicts. Carraway also was mentioned as a possible site to treat medical evacuees following Haiti's earthquake and, more recently, a long-term shelter for displaced tornado victims.

None of those ideas panned out.

Which makes last week's announcement of the Lovelady Center's attempt to buy the hospital property for a full-service shelter and service center for women and children great news.

Director Brenda Lovelady Spahn said the faith-based center, now operating in East Lake, hopes to close the deal on Aug. 1, News staff writer Jeremy Gray reported Thursday, and expects to move in late this year or early next year. "It's going to be a slow process, but it will be done in stages," Spahn said.

In stages, perhaps, because the project is such a big deal.

The Lovelady Center now houses about 300 people. The move to the Carraway site will allow it to house four times as many. In addition, the new center, to be named MetroPlex, will include medical, dental and eye clinics, a child-development center and teaching center. It also will provide counseling for women and children.

Those services will be limited to center residents at first, but eventually will be made available to the community, according to Spahn.

Two universities will open satellite offices on the MetroPlex campus, offering classes to neighborhood residents, Spahn says, and a local church will open a church there. A hotel and banquet rooms for nonprofits and businesses are planned as well.

Wow!

"We're working to make this a prototype for the entire country," Spahn said.

This is an ambitious project. And it should be welcomed by city officials and residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, especially those who were none too thrilled about the prospect the former hospital would become a re-entry center for former convicts and drug addicts.

Perhaps the plan's best part is Spahn says it is "fully funded." The center isn't seeking city money, she said, though a fundraising campaign is planned.

The entire city should be thankful to Spahn -- "Ms. Brenda," as she's referred to -- and the Lovelady Center board for recognizing a need and an opportunity, and working to make this project possible. The fear was that decaying Carraway buildings would not only be a blight on the northside but a symbol of decline so close to downtown.

Now, the city can look forward to Carraway's famous blue star not only lighted and rotating again, but symbolizing a return of service to the people of Birmingham not unlike what the hospital provided for 100 years.